Abu Dhabi and Apollo 55

by spike.comDecember 09, 2010 at 10:00AM
|
Views: 239

Alex Shelley

Apollo 55.

When Sabin and I first went to New Japan Pro Wrestling, we wrestled in the Tokyo Dome and won the IWGP Jr. Tag Team Belts. Imagine an X Division Tag Title, and that's kinda the equivalent. That was a real honor. We'd both competed in Japan for years, but New Japan was the biggest and most legendary company there.

There's a handful of teams that have made a difference in our careers. Ikuto Hidaka and Minoru Fujita, who may just seem like two random Japanese names to you, are two of my best friends in Japan and also the reason the Motor City Machine Guns exist. If we hadn't beat them for our first set of belts in 01MAX, we never would have kept teaming together defending the belts in Canada and the US.

Team 3-D was the first legendary team we got to tangle with. Beating them gave us a certain amount of prestige, and also taught us the finer points of brawling and what I like to call E-Style matches, or Extreme Hardcore wrestling.

Beer Money may be our generational peers. We have teamed longer than them, but they've been luckier than us, and honestly, they're the team we are in constant competition with. Of course, we're apples and oranges as far as styles and personalities go, but I respect them even if I don't like them.

Generation Me is a generation below us, and took the style of tag wrestling we pioneered up a notch. They're the one team that's more athletically gifted than we are and has expounded on the way we wrestle to create an even flashier version of tag team wrestling. They're mirror images of us athletically and in the ring, but totally different people outside of it.

Apollo 55, Devitt and Taguchi, are our biggest rivals in Japan. They manage to blend high impact moves and lucha libre, and as much as Beer Money may be our rivals in the States, A55 are definitely are biggest adversaries overseas. Here's to another great fight, lads.